Poker Video: MTT/SNG by vandweller (Mid Stakes)

Time Link to 00:05:50

Hilarious!

But just in case any newbies are following along and don't know this.... it's virtually always -EV to explain your logic to the person berating you in chat. If BUSSSSSS thinks vandweller is a donkey, that's going to be great for van.

Also, marking yourself as a knowledgeable regular to the others at the table is rarely wise.

Presumably vandweller knows all this and was joking, or believes BUSSSSSS won't know how to use the advice, or just thinks the fun of tweaking BUSSSSSS is worth a few pennies EV, or whatever.

You might have a individual judgment that your response might send someone to tilt, but against unknowns berating you just dummy up, take the abuse, and think of the profit it's generating.

Bonehead vandweller messes up the first hand. I set the blinds in SNG Wiz at 150/300 when the actual hand was 100/200. All the main points stand however, and the hand is still a call. See?

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4048/bussss.jpg

Also I refer to my HUD stats without explaining what they are. It's

VPIP / PFR / # HANDS
Open Raise SB / Open Raise BTN / Fold BB to Steal
CBet / Fold to CBET

But just in case any newbies are following along and don't know this.... it's virtually always -EV to explain your logic to the person berating you in chat. If BUSSSSSS thinks vandweller is a donkey, that's going to be great for van.

Also, marking yourself as a knowledgeable regular to the others at the table is rarely wise.

Presumably vandweller knows all this and was joking, or believes BUSSSSSS won't know how to use the advice, or just thinks the fun of tweaking BUSSSSSS is worth a few pennies EV, or whatever.

You might have a individual judgment that your response might send someone to tilt, but against unknowns berating you just dummy up, take the abuse, and think of the profit it's generating.

There's always going to be a group of solid regs and less solid regtards who will get a good read on you just from repeated exposure. I think the regtards see me as decent but way over-aggressive in spots because they don't actually understand equity and risk aversion all that fully and are just playing "monkey-see-monkey-do" poker. Unfortunately, you are going to educate the solid players just by playing and there's not much you can do about that besides not saying a word.

Generally speaking I don't talk anything strategy at the table. If someone mentions my play I just say something vague like "Very lucky today." or nothing at all. It doesn't help that I routinely get "OMG are you the REAL vandweller? ur vids are liek so sick" when I'm playing.

Mostly though if someone else mentions your play, it's a huge tell. If the stacks are at shove depth and a guy says "Is that your only move?" or "This isn't even poker" or "You risked your entire tournament with Q8 lol," that is a massive amount of information to betray, and I'm not going to miss it. So if you are the one giving out free info, there's usually going to be someone listening and waiting to use it against you.

I do make it a point to needle players who are winners but are whiners (no names here, but an example might be featured in the first hand) when they complain about thier beats. I don't know if this accrues to me in anything more than entertainment value but it seems that anything I can do to irritate or plant seeds of self-doubt in those who have a positive equity share at the table can only be to the good.

sigh, time link not working for me.

exporting hands from HEM to SNGWiz (8:25), i dont think it is possible from the replayer, but you can select the hand on the hand list(same screen where you mark the hands), right click copy to clipboard and then click on the paste button on the wiz.

Great vid Vandweller. I'd much appreciate it if you continued with the rest of your hands for at least part 2.

Thanks again.

Time Link to 00:22:04

The reasoning for how to extract value from drawing hands stated here is flawed, though. Sure, if he's on a live draw, and you raise, he's still going to call and the card that completes his draw is still going to come in, so that outcome doesn't change. However, you get value all the times it misses. Unless your read is that he's inclined to bluff a 3rd barrel of 1477 into a 3950 pot, you stand to miss that value.

Granted, you miss value from weaker (dead) draws like A7, A6, A9, and made hands like the case king, if he would fold to a raise but bet or call the river. But that's a different matter than what you seemed to be discussing in the video.

(This seems like a fundamental big-bet poker concept, so I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding your point in the video.)

I don't mind the flat call on the flop with top set, because top set really does cripple the deck and you have no reason to think he has the flush or straight draw. But when the turn puts 2 flush draws and 3 to a straight out there I'm probably happy to shove and expect to get called by a lot of his bet-bet range.

I wrote the above before seeing the spoiler. His 3 barrel bluff may indicate that I'm undervaluing the line you took, but of course it's a question of ranges. If he's always always 3-barrelling any ace-high that he would have called preflop, then you probably played it perfectly no matter how scary the board gets, because now total trash that can't call a raise makes up most of his range throughout the hand.

Time Link to 00:16:35

Im not sure about this. We're giving him a chance to hit his hand if he doesn't has us already beat and then we shove. Basically he has to fold hands that has us beat for this to be a good play and im not sure if that's the case. It's true that our play should look stronger with a line like this but people don't like folding pairs from my own experience.

I guess it's fine. Just threw some thoughts out there Smile

And agree with AKQJT. I was going to comment on that aswell but he hit us with a wall of text.

Haha, I can be long-winded sometimes. Any volunteers to be my editor?

Time Link to 00:04:11

not a fan of vans but that is one awesome van!

Im not sure about this. We're giving him a chance to hit his hand if he doesn't has us already beat and then we shove. Basically he has to fold hands that has us beat for this to be a good play and im not sure if that's the case. It's true that our play should look stronger with a line like this but people don't like folding pairs from my own experience.

I would like this play more if there would be a legit draw on the board and still firing on every turn. People tend not to let go good draws on the flop, but they will drop them a lot easier if their draw doesn't complete on the turn. On the other hand, if the opponent would be on a top pair and 3rd to a flush comes, the turn would be a lot scarier for him to call. On this occasion, he would have to be on a stone cold bluff, because we bet on a board that's perfect on bluffing, but he should drop his bluff after our bet. If he is bad, we could have value from two overcards, which makes our play here terrible. Also, if he has a T here, we would have two streets to catch up with him.

By the way, now that I've finished the video, I really do like this format. I find HH reviews a lot easier to deal with than live play, frankly. In live play, i'm always trying to rewind by 45 seconds to find the hand that the narrator is talking about, now that it's over. In HH review, Hero's hold cards are still visible and I can follow the action.

I especially like the postflop hands, preflop hands with limpers, and pretty much anything that isn't just a simple SNGWiz calculation. Not that there's not value to seeing how a pro uses Wiz, also.

And I'd never thought about the technique for marking hands while I'm playing, even though it's pretty obvious. Already using it now.

Thanks Van for a great video. I love how you play situations with the stacks-setup.

Time Link to 00:44:46

I c/bet probably every time here and I take the pot down most of the time. Well over most of the time really.

I won't argue your play because I play $12's and not the higher stakes as in yourself.

What I really want to say is that you can't be afraid to bet your KK every time an Ace hits the board. Maybe it is just a lower stakes thing but I feel like I make a lot more chips not being scared here.

What I really want to say is that you can't be afraid to bet your KK every time an Ace hits the board. Maybe it is just a lower stakes thing but I feel like I make a lot more chips not being scared here.

It's not necessarily a matter of being scared, though. It's a matter of extracting value, and considering what hands (there may be some) will give you value if you cbet on an ace-high flop.

Whereas many hands have 6 outs to draw out on AK unimproved, so you might wish to cbet and take down the pot right there, most are drawing near-dead to KK if they didn't pair the ace-high flop.

Time Link to 00:23:19

How can this be the very next hand?

How can this be the very next hand?

Magic.

LoL ok. sorry for my insubordination

Time Link to 00:49:32

If Judddd was a good reg, he'd know that he has an any 2 card push (or close to it) and just shove on you here. I feel like good regs here show up a lot with AA-QQ that raise this size to induce, and the other hands they just shove. Obviously this is very read dependent and your play can be extremely profitable against a number of regs, but I feel like a truly good reg might be trapping here with a raise size like this. I do respect the amount of balls you have in spots like this though, it's something I don't do very often (re-stealing especially with stack sizes so close)

Time Link to 00:49:40

Another point is that even if your play is slightly -EV here, if it works it sets you up to really own the bubble. Whereas if Judddd gets away with this, it really sets him up to own you since he'll have slightly more chips and be able to shove into you in the future. So based on future hands you definitely can take a little -EV here.

If Judddd was a good reg, he'd know that he has an any 2 card push (or close to it) and just shove on you here. I feel like good regs here show up a lot with AA-QQ that raise this size to induce, and the other hands they just shove. Obviously this is very read dependent and your play can be extremely profitable against a number of regs, but I feel like a truly good reg might be trapping here with a raise size like this.

I agree in general, but I also think Judddd is largely self-taught and doesn't play a completely doctrinaire type of game. So yeah it's largely read-dependent. YMMV in all these cases, and you can't just start jamming on min-raises indiscriminately (although most players would do better by themselves if they did.)

I do respect the amount of balls you have in spots like this though, it's something I don't do very often (re-stealing especially with stack sizes so close)

It's not an issue of balls. It's just an issue of: "Does this play win money on average?" If so, do it. If you bust out, open another.

Another point is that even if your play is slightly -EV here, if it works it sets you up to really own the bubble. Whereas if Judddd gets away with this, it really sets him up to own you since he'll have slightly more chips and be able to shove into you in the future. So based on future hands you definitely can take a little -EV here.

I think it's more of an issue of "can I make up the -EV in one or two hands in the very near future?" vs. "I can really be set up to own the bubble". SNGs are too short and the equity ceiling too low to make -EV gambles to build a stack for some long-term plan. But yes, you have the right idea.

I just wanted to say I really enjoyed the video. The parts I enjoyed the most were the hands that you had questions about and brought them over to Wiz to go over. It was really useful to see some cold hard analysis in defending your decisions.

I have a little question about the T8s hand. I am a little confused on the theory behind these spots, but the way I always read it is that I just shove 90% all day in these spots and then wait for them to call me with a hand that is wide enough so that my shove is break even.

For example, if Judd is only calling 25% you should actually be shoving ATC and by shoving tighter say only 50-60% you are making his calling range more correct. Does this make sense?

If that does make sense are there reasons why you aren't shoving 90-100% if he is only calling 25%? Perhaps some sort of future implications in this sng or others?

ty

Time Link to 00:22:04

I have a question about this particular spot. What happens if say if on the turn there's the 9 of spades, and the river is still the J of spades. Assume you don't have the K of spades in your hand ( ). He then bets turn just as in the video, we call, but on the river he checks (on the 4th spade, and the possible straight completer). Do we still check? (again your hand is KcKd because you would obviously call with 2nd nut flush)

What happens if an A hits the river and he shuts down? Is he ever slowplaying his A5 when he hits is A on the river?

Time Link to 00:32:46

This play is great against people with a brain... Terrible if they dont understand ICM or the bubble. I use to do this everytime I was chip leader which was a huge leak of mine cause if your getting called by A5s its a terrible spot for you. So make sure you know your players thinking level before making this play.

Time Link to 00:20:04

I agree with your flop call here, for the reasons you stated however you are also missing a key point out here, that this is nearly the perfect flop for you.

1 - You have flopped top set.
2 - Back door to the 2nd nutz flush.
3 - Assuming he has hit a lower pair here, then for him to improve his hand will often improve yours (i.e. Full-Houes).

I dont often smooth call big hands like this, however in this case, I feel you have too.

Time Link to 00:22:55

Actually it is a very strange shove by him at the end and this guy really doesnt know what he is doing.

First of all you have shown massive strengh here, raised preflop and then called his flop and turn bets..... As you said the river is a danger card that completes nearly all draws, so what did he put you on????????

Your play actually looks like you are drawing too